Success Stories 
International Republican Institute (IRI) 
The International Republican Institute Leverages Angel.com IVR Solution to Strengthen Democracy in Nigeria
The Company
The International Republican Institute (IRI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to advancing freedom and democracy worldwide. Among its many activities, the IRI sends delegates to foreign countries to monitor and observe election processes to insure they are open and transparent and follow the democratic process. IRI has monitored more than 130 elections in more than 40 countries.
The Challenge
Shawn Beighle, Information and Technology Director at IRI sought to automate the delegate election monitoring and reporting process in order to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of the information collected. Traditionally, field delegates would record observations in a hand-written notebook. Due to travel and other challenges, that practice resulted in 2-3 day turnaround from the time when elections were observed to the time when information was reported back and compiled for evaluation and reporting. To address this issue, Beighle initially considered an Internet-based approach, but limited Internet access in remote and sometimes undeveloped areas made this unrealistic.
The Solution
IRI found a useful and empowering approach by rolling out a new IVR application from Angel.com. The Angel.com solution provides an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use telephone-based solution that facilitates data collection and reporting.
During the 2007 Nigerian elections on April 14 and 21, 2007, IRI deployed 17 monitoring teams comprised of 59 international delegates throughout the country. As standard cellular coverage is unreliable in the region, each team used a satellite phone along with a short questionnaire of eight key questions to help IRI gauge the voting process at each polling station visited.
If the prompts did not provide sufficient context, delegates had the option of leaving a voicemail to provide more details. Messages and survey findings were instantly sent to IRI’s election observation command center where they were listened to and incorporated into the overall findings.
The Results
Through the use of the Angel.com, IRI was able to collect enough quantitative data to confidently release its findings to the media soon after the elections, and thus provide the citizens of Nigeria and U.S. policy makers with additional information to judge the validity of the country’s electoral process.
“The biggest benefit of the Angel.com IVR is the benefit of real-time information,” said Beighle. “As reports in Nigeria poured in from across the country, we were immediately able to see what was happening throughout the region.”
Another benefit to Beighle was the ease of implementation and lack of IT support required. IRI has a small IT department that supports more than 500 people in 47 countries. Thanks to Angel.com’s user-friendly Site Builder interface, Beighle was able to build and deploy the IVR application without the support or involvement of IRI’s IT team. According to Beighle, “A great advantage of Angel.com is the empowerment. The user-friendly and intuitive solution enabled me to easily create my own application.”
Simple and fast to create and cost-efficient to run, the new telephone-based application provided the organization with an incredibly useful new tool that it plans to rely on in elections to come.
